Review: 'Naayak' (Telugu)

Film: Naayak (Telugu)
Director: VV Vinayak
Cast: Ram Charan Teja, Kajal Agarwal, Amala paul
Ratings: ***1/2

As far as movie beginnings go, Naayak starts with a bang, diving right in by introducing its hero, Naayak (Ram Charan) literally flying down, knocking a gang of goons and smashing the villain’s bones. With a start so energetic, director VV Vinayak ensures the pace doesn’t flag one bit during the two and half hour long duration. Naayak is unapologetically a formula film and without mincing words, all about Ram Charan. So, after showcasing the hero’s action avatar, the next scene has him showing off as the smooth dancer he is.

Naayak is a film about Cherry (Ram Charan) a software engineer who falls in love with Kajal Aggarwal, who happens to be the sister of gangster Gandipeta Babji (Rahul Dev). That only is the beginning of trouble for Cherry who soon has the CBI hunting him down for the murder of the DGP. We’ll stop at this as revealing anything more will only play a spoiler. We’ll just say that the twist is  unexpected and serves quite the volley.

Focussing on Ram Charan’s acting chops, we’ll say the role requires the young star to maintain a poker-faced, intense expression through the movie and he does it quite well. The action scenes are interesting and innovatively shot, though on the negative side one will say they are a bit gory.

Like in all formula films, the songs come in right when the going gets tense and Kajal Aggarwal plays the hero’s pretty girlfriend well. The actor doesn’t have much to do except pout and look pretty in the songs. That said, it is Amala Paul who ends up at the short end of the stick, with barely a few scenes. We guess dancing with Ram Charan to the remixed classic hit, Subhalekha Rasukunna, might make up for it. Yes, the songs are good and the locales extremely beautiful. The film’s cinematography deserves special mention for making all the scenes look so fresh and vivid. Yet, while all these various aspects work for the film, what we absolutely love about Naayak is its comedy.

The movie has all the veterans from Brahmanandam to MS Narayana and Posani Krishna Murali doing a brilliant job delivering the funnies. There were quite a few scenes that had us laughing till we had tears in our eyes. The comedy really was the most memorable part of the movie for us.

Over all, we’ll say that even if the film is about the age-old formula of the hero bashing the bad guys and coming up trumps, Naayak is an entertaining film that you won’t regret watching.